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I lost my baby girl a year ago today and I miss her greatly each and every day... I love you Tori. You are always in my heart and mind. You are my hero and I am forever grateful for the sacrifice you made. Your presence is constant and we try our best to live by your example. Please continue to guide us until we meet once again.

Thank you to all of you who continue to pray for and support our family. It is all greatly appreciated and needed by all of us.

Happy birthday to our beautiful angel Tori!! We love and miss you greatly and are doing our best to make it through this first birthday without you... We arrived in Orem very early Monday but at 1am went to to see your wonderful new headstone and of course the sprinklers were running!! We know you were smiling and laughing as we danced around all of the spray with flashlights to admire it :)

We also held a gathering at the cemetery for many friends and family. Please add Tori Schmanski as a Facebook friend to view many of the pictures. I will also post some on the Pray 4 Tori site. as well.

Today marks the 5 year anniversary of Tori's brain injury and certainly tears were shed once more... But we chose to celebrate our time together as a family and begin our Father's Day with steak and salmon on the BBQ and watching Tori's favorite movie "She's the Man" which just 'happened' to be playing on ABC tonight. We love and miss you greatly Tori and can feel your presence. We look forward to being with you again.

Thank you all for your love and support. It's still very difficult for us all but "one day at a time" is the only mantra we can now follow.

Heaven's not a place that you go when ya die it's the moment in life when ya actually feel ALIVE.
-Tori Schmanski (early 2005)

Thank you for your patience and I have finally included the audio recordings and other items for Tori's Celebration of Life service below. I sincerely apologize for the delay. They have been ready for some time though I haven't in my ability to accumulate and present them for all of you. I tried many weeks ago but struggled greatly and just needed some time and to make it through this difficult holiday season first. We love and miss you so very much Tori...

Pages from Tori's wonderful Memorial Book will hopefully be posted on this page shortly as well.

Thank you all once more for the love, prayers and support for Tori and our family. It is greatly appreciated and we are truly blessed to have all of you in our lives.

All this information is provided by the City of Orem and Weather Underground. Having found myself wandering to their site quite often lately I wanted to share it with all of you. While we all have reasons to visit Orem, UT (great people there), it is sometimes difficult. Right as I am writing this, I am finding myself 7840 miles or 12617 kilometers away from there... The Weather Underground information site provides a way to stay connected. I am sure I am not alone.

So to make it as easy as possible to access, I have placed a widget on the right side of Tori's site for all that information to easily be available to all of us.

Thank you for all of the love, support and sympathy our family has received over the past nine days since Tori's passing and we are very grateful for all of those who could attend Tori's viewing, service, dedication and luncheon afterward. We consider all of you as part of our family.

We would also like to especially thank Paul and Sandy Schmanski for everything they have done for Tori and us over the past 4.5 years and for all of the preparation last week for the celebration of Tori's life. We love you both so much!!

To Guy Lunardi, you are and always will be a part of family and your heart, kindness and generosity are boundless. You amaze us continuously and we love you more than you can imagine. Guy also put in so much time and effort in making Tori's life celebration so special.

To Marilyn Hess who has also supported Tori and our family for many years, you are the ultimate example of what a friendship should entail. We love you so much as well and thank you for all you have for us during this very difficult past week.

Pictures, video and audio was taken during Tori's celebration of life and I will be putting together a presentation for all of those who could not attend over the next couple of weeks. It truly was special and I will share the celebration with all of you.

If you wish to see many of the wonderful pictures now please use Facebook and add 'Tori Schmanski' as a friend and I will approve the friendship.

Thank you all for the unbelievable outpouring of love and support for Tori and our family through many channels including the www.pray4tori.com site, Facebook accounts, telephone and email. We are deeply touched, sincerely grateful and truly blessed and our appreciation cannot be described in words.

I finished writing Tori's obituary below at 3am this morning and we have now finalized it through meetings with the our local church, mortuary and the cemetery. Maria and I want to express our deepest sympathies for any parent who has had to go through all of this and bury their child... It truly is a heart wrenching and unnatural process that we wish no parent would have to endure.

Our beloved Tori Schmanski passed away Saturday, November 7, 2009 and is now dancing with angels.

Tori was a beautiful and vibrant person who had an incredibly positive and inspirational impact on so many people during her short time with us all. She was very compassionate, a remarkable leader and her wonderful smile and charismatic personality naturally drew others to her. Her life revolved around her friends and family whom she loved so dearly. She will live eternally in the hearts of all she touched.

She was also independent, very intelligent, articulate, athletic and confident in her abilities which allowed her to excel academically and in everything else she pursued including her passion for dance. In addition she enjoyed snowboarding, family vacations, computers and the internet, listening to and writing music, all of her amazing friends and lastly boys much to the dismay of her parents at times... She had an ardent zest for life and celebrated it with each and every moment.

Tori was truly a hero who chose the utmost sacrifice of her life when faced with extreme adversity. True to her character, she always thought of and placed others before herself and we are forever grateful for her courage and unselfish act of love in helping her sister and cousin first and foremost on that tragic Father's Day, June 19, 2005 where Tori sustained an anoxic brain injury that took her livelihood but not her incredible strength, determination and will to live. Tori, thank you so much, you are the ultimate example of how we should all lead our lives and you will forever be in our hearts and souls.

For the thousands of caring and devoted people who have followed Tori's story (www.pray4tori.com) over the past 52 months we would sincerely like to thank you all for the love, prayers and support you have provided for Tori and our family. We are truly blessed and your presence was felt each and every day. Every one of you has made a dramatic impact on our lives. Words cannot really express how eternally grateful, appreciative and thankful we are for everything that has been done for Tori and our family.

We would like to extend a very special thank you to all of those who provided care and support for Tori including her home nurses, therapists and teachers and especially the outstanding and unsurpassed medical staff at the Primary Childrenâ€™s Medical Center and Shriner's Hospital in SLC. All of you are truly angels among us.

Tori is survived by her mother Maria (Harris) and father Tim, siblings Whitney and Brendan as well as her grandparents Paul and Sandy Schmanski, and Rex and Lois Harris of Delta, UT. Additionally Tori is survived by numerous loving aunts, uncles, cousins and incredibly caring and supportive friends. Thank you to â€˜The Dance Clubâ€™ girls and families whom we love so much!

A celebration of Toriâ€™s life will be held at 11:00 a.m. Friday, November 13, 2009 at Windsor Stake Center 1600 N 60 E Orem, UT 84057.
The family will receive friends Thursday evening November 12, 2009 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Walker Sanderson Funeral Home 800 N 646 E Orem, UT 84097 and again at the Windsor Stake Center prior to the funeral service on Friday at 9:30 a.m.
Internment will follow the services in the Orem City Cemetery.
Friends can also call on a light luncheon after the service held at the Windsor Stake Center.
In lieu of flowers please donate in Tori's name to the Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, UT.
Online condolences may be shared www.walkerfamilymortuary.com

We love you Tori and know you are whole so dance, dance, dance once more!!